Colonel Landcraft shook his head doubtfully.
“Running off other men’s cattle never will do it, Macdonald.”
The door of the colonel’s room which gave into the hall of the main entrance opened without the formality of announcement. Frances drew back in quick confusion, speaking her apology from behind the door.
“I ask your pardon, father. I heard voices here and wondered who it could be—I didn’t know you had come home.”
“Your appearance is opportune, Miss Landcraft,” her father told her, with no trace of ill-humor. “Come in. Here is this wild Alan Macdonald come bursting in upon us from his hills.”
The colonel indicated him with a wave of the hand, and Macdonald bowed, his heart shrinking when he saw how coldly she returned his greeting from her place at the door.
“He has come riding,” the colonel continued, “with a demand on me to be allowed to woo you, and carry you off to his cave among the rocks. Show him the door, and add your testimony to my assurance—which seems inadequate to satisfy the impetuous gentleman—that his case is hopeless.”
The colonel waved them away with that, and turned again, with his jerky suddenness, to his telegrams and letters. The colonel had not meant for Macdonald to pass out of the door through which he had entered. That was the military portal; the other one, opening into the hall from which Frances came, was the world’s door for entering that house. And it was in that direction Colonel Landcraft had waved them when he ordered Frances to take the visitor away.
“This way, Mr. Macdonald, please,” said she, politely cold, unfeelingly formal. For all the warmth that he could discover in her voice and eyes, or in her white face, so unaccountably severe and hard, there might never have been a garden with white gravel path, or a hot hasty kiss given in it—and received.